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Artists-in-Residence: Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté

Artists-in-Residence: Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté

Cancelled

Wednesday, October 1 2014 | 7 pm

Free & open to the public

Duke Performances has been informed by Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté’s management that they experienced unexpected personal and logistical difficulties as they set off from Bamako to start their US tour. These factors, complicated by Toumani’s poor health, have resulted in their inability to travel to the US for their tour — all dates in the States, including their residency and performance at Duke Performances on Wed & Thu, Oct. 1 & 2, have been cancelled. Duke Performances & Toumani Diabaté deeply regret the circumstances that have led to this outcome. We are not currently planning to reschedule the engagement.

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Artists-in-Residence Event: Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté• Modern Griots: A Listening Session & Kora Demonstration with Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté •
Malian kora virtuoso and two-time GRAMMY winner Toumani Diabaté arrives in Durham with his son Sidiki Diabaté to perform as a duo at Duke Performances, advancing a remarkable musical lineage that the family traces back seventy-two generations. Toumani Diabaté is the world’s greatest living player of the kora — a twenty-one-string West African harp-lute — and is known for his ability to beautifully render melody, rhythm, and bass simultaneously. The younger Diabaté apprenticed with his father, and is developing his own incisive voice on the instrument.

"We’re not going backwards, trying to play just how my father and grandfather did these songs," the elder Diabaté says. "We have to do it our way. We’re modern griots, we live in the city, we’re connected to the world." The two have only been playing together publicly since late 2013, and World Circuit recently released their debut album Toumani & Sidiki.

At the intimate Carrack gallery in downtown Durham, artists-in-residence Toumani and Sidiki will join moderator and Duke professor Laurent Dubois for a listening session and kora demonstration exploring and illustrating their cenutries-old musical tradition.

Co-presented with the Duke Africa Initiative and the Forum for Scholars and Publics. Made possible, in part, with support from the Duke Africa Initiative, a faculty-led initiative that brings together scholars from across the University and Health System who have a shared interest, whether through their research or programmatic activities, in the countries and cultures of the African continent.

"It’s haunting stuff, no doubt, not in the 'ooh, scary' sense, but in the awe inspired by hearing music this pure woven from the hands of a man."
—Pitchfork

"The two players’ styles combine seamlessly, though it’s possible to discern subtle differences: the youthful Sidiki favours quicksilver runs and staccato bursts, while Toumani’s lines are more lyrical and attuned to the melancholic."
—Independent